I am probably not most people’s idea of a poster-child for women’s liberation. In real life I’m a pretty typical suburban housewife, who takes seminary classes and writes about theology around picking up after my two daughters. On any given day, I can be found traipsing my kids through the grocery store to cash in on the meat sales, exercising a haphazard dominion over the laundry hamper, or perfecting my burrito recipe.
So why would a 30-something, happily married stay-at-home mom be writing on the dangers of patriarchal authoritarianism? Liberty in Christ is a topic that hits close to home for me. When I was a young girl, my homeschooling, family of ten got swept up into Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles (“IBLP”). Gothard’s teachings revolved around a set of “basic principles” which directed the Christian life. The deeper into the program you got, the narrower this path of basic principles became. His followers willingly adopted his convictions against everything from television to Cabbage Patch dolls (yes, really).
Undergirding everything in Gothard’s ethic was the basic principle of authority and submission. Society had a sickness called “rebellion,” and submission to earthly authority was the cure. Authority meant that everyone was under an “umbrella of protection,” and if you went out from under that umbrella, there could quite literally be hell to pay. Authorities - whether it was your boss, your parent, or your husband - were not to be questioned or doubted, because God spoke into your life through their direction, even if they were in sin. Wives were particularly admonished to be “submissive,” and girls were trained from an early age to be quiet and compliant, since that would be their role in marriage.
Some years later, I would discover just how true the words of Paul in Colossians 2:20-23 really were:
Therefore, if you have died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations - “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using - according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
Bill Gothard’s basic principles did have an appearance of wisdom, but as it turned out, they were of no use against the power of sin. In 2014, stories began to trickle out about Gothard’s behavior towards young women and teenage girls. The accusations accumulated; more than thirty women with the same, tired story of isolation, shaming, and flattery, all calculated to bring women and girls already conditioned to revere authority completely under his power. Some of the accusers had been minors when Gothard singled them out. Most them had been hand-selected by him to work at his Oak Brook office. At first as I watched the stories come out, I wondered if it was possible that these women could be disgruntled employees looking for a way to get back at an admittedly controversial figure. Then I found out that my oldest sister had been one of his victims.
As a new generation has seen what was really behind the curtain at IBLP, many have become disaffected, abandoning altogether the scriptures that had been twisted in the hands of IBLP’s founder. But in His mercy, God has preserved my faith despite the weeds of legalism that tried to choke it out. As I grew in faith, I began to understand that true Christian obedience comes, not from rule-following or fear of the law, but from the new nature that Christ forms in us - a nature that is love, through and through.
Sadly, in leaving IBLP behind, I did not leave patriarchial authoritarianism behind. I soon discovered that authority-centric models for marriage pervaded mainstream resources in the church - and that they were posing a direct threat to the purity of the gospel. Over the last several years, I’ve dug deep into scripture to grapple with the true significance of headship and submission in Christian marriage, and I’ve found overwhelming confirmation that women’s freedom is extraordinarily precious to God - so precious that He sent His Son to die so that the “captive daughter of Zion” might be loosed from her bonds (Isaiah 52:1-2).
My work revolves around proclaiming liberty to the captives of patriarchal legalism, by showing that the Head to whom we ultimately submit is a Lord who has set us free. If any of that sounds like something you’d like to hear more about, subscribe to my Substack below!
